


Just a Dark and Lonely Road

by celeste9



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Baseball, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Immortality, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 01:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1709714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Steve felt alone, and one time he wasn't. (CA:TWS spoilers)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just a Dark and Lonely Road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Basched](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basched/gifts).



> Happy birthday to basched! I hope you are having a lovely trip and enjoy this little fic. :) Fills the 'immortality/reincarnation' square on my trope_bingo card. Title is from The Black Keys.
> 
> Spoilers for CA:TWS.

_1._

_Allow him the dignity of his choice._

Peggy’s words continued to echo in Steve’s head.

_Allow him the dignity of his choice._

Bucky was gone, for real this time. Steve couldn’t get Howard to fly him to another enemy base for a last second rescue. There was no one to rescue. Bucky would be nothing more than a body crushed on the rocks, frail and broken like he had never been in life. Steve shuddered.

Steve had so many memories of Bucky from when they were growing up, Bucky getting him out of yet another scrape, Bucky picking him up off the ground. Bucky had died the way he had lived, protecting Steve.

Peggy had said that Bucky must have thought he was worth it. Steve wished that he felt like he was.

Phillips had wanted Erskine to create him an army. Instead, he’d gotten Steve. Steve flexed his fingers, curling his hand into a fist. Sometimes he caught his reflection in a piece of glass and thought he was looking at a stranger. He was this new person, this _super soldier,_ but mostly he still felt like Steve Rogers, a puny kid from Brooklyn.

Erskine had given him a gift, and Bucky had died to keep him safe.

Steve figured he owed them his best. He would stop the Red Skull.

It wasn’t like he had anything left to lose.

-

_2._

The punching bag was lying busted on the floor. Steve was gonna have to ask S.H.I.E.L.D. to leave him more than two at a time. Two didn’t last long enough.

2012\. The year was 2012. It almost sounded fake. Who could have imagined he’d still be around in 2012?

They hadn’t colonized the moon, or found aliens on Mars. There were no flying cars. People still killed each other.

But the world was still spinning, and America was still free. There was a black president. Homosexuals could get married, if they lived in the right state. Women were doctors and lawyers and teachers and seemingly, whatever they wanted to be. He supposed that was something.

The last time Steve had seen Nick Fury, he’d left him a file from S.H.I.E.L.D., with the names of all the people he’d known. Steve was afraid to look at it. He was afraid of what he would find.

It had been _seventy years._ Steve knew that more often than not, he would look at a name and see the word ‘deceased’. He wasn’t sure he was strong enough to bear it. Howard, Dum Dum, Morita, Falsworth, Gabe, Dernier.

Peggy.

Steve knew that he was going to have to get used to the idea that the world he had known was gone, and the people with it. He had to live in this new world instead, this new world filled with graves and aged faces.

Maybe tomorrow he would be strong enough to look.

-

_3._

“Can I get you anything?” the waitress asked.

She was pretty, with green eyes and a shy smile. She couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen.

Steve smiled at her. “Maybe just another coffee, thank you.”

“Back in a sec,” she said, and bustled off.

Steve had stopped in a small town somewhere in Illinois, he didn’t even know where. Since he’d left New York behind him, Steve had just driven and driven, the wind whipping through his hair as he crossed the open road on his motorcycle.

He thought he should have been enjoying this more. This should have made him happier, nothing but time and the skies above, the motorcycle powering along between his legs and America spread out before him.

Mostly what Steve felt was lonely. He stopped in big cities and small ones, eating cheap food and drinking cheap coffee, observing the lives around him. He sketched sometimes, capturing the strangers he met.

It just made him feel more apart. He thought about the soldiers he had served with, the people who had fought and died to keep this country free. He thought about his friends, the brief moments of laughter in the midst of the struggle. He wondered if any of these people had ever spared a thought for the blood that had spilled to ensure they could sit in their Starbucks and their McDonalds.

The waitress brought his coffee and Steve gave her another smile. Steve was pretty sure that what she really wanted was his number.

“Is that your girlfriend?” she asked, nodding at Steve’s sketchbook.

Steve looked down into Peggy’s face. He hadn’t even realized he’d been drawing her.

“Once upon a time,” he said.

“She’s pretty,” the girl said, before she got called away to another table.

Steve knew that Fury expected him to have his cross country trip and then come back to New York, to S.H.I.E.L.D. Steve thought he would. He didn’t know what else there was for him.

His life was gone, but the world was always in need of Captain America.

Or so they told him.

-

_4._

Steve walked out of Peggy’s room and stopped, bracing his hand against the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut.

He remembered the way Peggy had been, vibrant and strong. That woman was still in there, Steve knew. He’d seen her, no matter how many years had added wrinkles to Peggy’s face and dulled her eyes. She was still Peggy.

But she was sick, and that hurt. Peggy deserved better. Peggy deserved to live out her years in her own bed, surrounded by the people who loved her. Peggy deserved peace, and love, and happiness. Not this.

Steve had spent seventy years beneath the ice, while everyone he knew grew older and passed on, while he missed his dance with Peggy, while he missed everything. He wondered if it even mattered. Who knew what the serum had done to him - maybe if the plane hadn’t crashed, it would still be the same. Maybe Steve would have watched as his friends showed the struggle of the years on their faces, and Steve stayed just the same.

He didn’t know which was worse.

One of the workers at the home passed by him, stopping to give him a concerned look. “Are you all right?” the woman asked.

Steve forced a smile. “Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”

He wasn’t, not really, but he had to be.

-

_5._

“Do you really think you can help him?” Sam asked, as they sat beneath the stars.

Steve shrugged. “I have to try.”

“Yeah, I get that. I know he was your friend. But Steve, I just… Are you ready for what happens if the guy you knew is just… gone?”

“He’s not,” Steve said, and rose to his feet. He felt Sam’s gaze on him as he walked farther away, to where he could be alone for a minute.

He knew that Sam meant well. It meant more than Sam would ever know that he was even there. He didn’t have to be.

But he didn’t understand.

To Sam, Bucky was only the Winter Soldier. To Sam, Bucky was the villain of the story. Sam didn’t know what Bucky sounded like when he laughed and he had never seen Bucky flash that smile that was guaranteed to charm the socks off any woman within sight. Sam didn’t know Bucky’s heart and his spirit and his courage. Sam couldn’t understand.

Maybe Sam was right. Maybe Bucky was past saving, and maybe Steve needed to be prepared for that.

But sometimes Steve felt like all he ever did was lose. His parents, Peggy, Howard, the Howling Commandos. Bucky.

Now Bucky was here and all Steve knew was that he was never going to give up on him. Not while Steve still had breath in him. Not if he had to travel across the whole world on his own.

Winter Soldier or not, Bucky was Bucky, and Bucky was Steve’s. Steve was going to find him and then he wouldn’t ever let go.

-

_+1_

On the floor of Stark Tower where they each had their apartments, there was a big common area with a kitchen and a table and a TV and some couches. No one was around at the moment, though, and it was just Steve and Sunday Night Baseball. He sunk back into the couch cushions.

“Ah, this is the game of baseball, is it not? Captain, may I join you?”

“Sure,” Steve said, and scooted over on the couch.

Thor sat down, focusing intently on the screen. He was eager about everything, like Earth was completely fascinating and he needed to learn as much as he could. “Who is winning?”

“Oakland. They’re the ones at bat now.”

“And this is pleasing to you?”

Steve shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t really care who wins. I’m just looking for a good game.”

“Ah, I see.”

They sat for a while in silence, the only sound the chattering of the announcers and the noise of the game. The crowd, the crack of the bat, the thud of the ball in the catcher’s mitt. Steve could still remember the last ball game he’d been to, like it had been only yesterday.

“You know,” he found himself saying, “I thought... I thought, out of everything that’s different now, that at least baseball would be the same. But it isn’t. There’s the playoffs instead of just the World Series. They’ve got all these specialized relief pitchers, and the _DH._ ” Steve couldn’t help but spit out the word, feeling faintly disgusted even thinking about it. DH. Ugh. “The teams are all different. Brooklyn doesn’t even _have_ a teamanymore. The Dodgers moved to _Los Angeles._ But I guess that sounds stupid.”

“No,” Thor said. “It does not. You wish to see something you recognize, and baseball was important to you.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it was.” Steve looked at Thor and thought that, out of everyone, maybe Thor was the only one who could actually understand. “I woke up and the world wasn’t mine anymore.”

Thor’s eyes were sorrowful. “I know.”

“It must seem like nothing to you. Our lives are just… like gnats. Over and gone, while you’ll be around forever. Immortal.”

“To you, we must seem so. But we are not immortal. We grow old and eventually, we die.”

“Do you think that will happen to me?” Steve asked, suddenly desperate. “This serum, will it… Will it let me die, Thor?”

“I do not know the answer you seek, Captain.” Thor rested his large hand on Steve’s shoulder. “I wish I did. All I can say to you is that… you have friends, Steve Rogers. You are not alone.”

Steve smiled, and for the first time in a long time, he actually meant it. “I know.”

**_ End _ **


End file.
